


eating god

by doreah



Series: your heart is a shaken fist [1]
Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Emotional Porn, F/F, Hate Sex, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-11-19 06:00:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18131870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doreah/pseuds/doreah
Summary: This isn’t your fall from grace. Been there, done that, got the red robe and white bonnet.





	eating god

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly can't decide if this is part of my "your heart is a shaken fist" series or not. I'll put it in there, because it _can_ fit, but only as a prequel to "surround..." so there's really no reason to read anything else to understand this. I wanted to explore what the first time could have been like, but this sort of went in a slightly different direction.
> 
> HUGE, HUGE hugs and thanks to the always clever and wonderful [@lazarus_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/profile) for her meticulous editing and for laying down some seriously awesome lines for me. Like, seriously, if you like this story, I can guarantee you have her to thank for making it readable and evocative. Xx
> 
> Bonus: [A gifset I made before I really started writing](https://serenagaywaterford.tumblr.com/post/183251584520/does-the-body-lie-moving-like-this-are-these). Doesn't follow the scene identically, but it's very much the same vibe. And [a playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/1118259787/playlist/3RcqdqtMAdmOzSzN0S247b?si=_CN9j8uIRu2lAMcOzE5m0w), because I can't help myself.

There are a multitude of options available to torture and wound Serena Joy, many of which she brings unto herself, and then others that her husband brings to fruition on her behalf behind closed doors. The walls here aren’t as thick as you first believed, and he’s not as subtle either. By the time she comes to your darkened bedroom in her self-built house of horrors, with the glistening of tears on her cheeks, there is so much she's been through and not much left for you draw from. You've already taken the child she called hers, her one deranged reason for living in this Hell. In a way, you've even taken her husband, his affections and nightly perversions, and violently usurped her household throne.

Your blood pulses with revenge, it’s a new feeling, carrying a sharpness that takes you by surprise. You’ve never been _that_ person, never the type to hurt someone else out of spite. Sure, it's been a nice fantasy on your worst days. A shotgun aimed at their heads, matching his and hers blood splatters on the wall.

Gilead made you many things. It also made you a person who thought about revenge less a simple plate, and more an elaborate banquet, where not all the dishes are served cold.

You could hit her, choke her, scratch or beat her, whip her, hold her down by the wrists until they bruise as someone else rapes her. You could stab her in the neck with her gardening shears—a  fitting, if messy end that you’ve fantasized once or twice because her trust in you not to react then was both ignorant and short-sighted. You could burn her hand as they did to Alma, take an eye as they did to Janine, or abandon her for weeks, bloodied and bruised, in a locked bedroom as she’s done to you. But none of that makes her a criminal in Gilead and more than anything, you don't wish her pain, she's too pitiful for that; you wish her fear.

There’s always been that other weapon you have, the one that floated around like a phantom, just above your heads:

     You can take her god.

Steal it, keep it close to you instead, hide it inside yourself inside. Kill it. Covet the power. Force her down to the unholy level she believes you exist on. Destroy her arrogant godliness and her faith in one simple, instinctive action, and leave her broken, barren body in the wreckage to be eaten by crows. All because her god here has the dumbest fucking rules you’ve ever heard. She wouldn't be so vulnerable otherwise.

You can empty her, and refill her only with sin. After all, she’s the one who claims women are mere vessels and she's always been desperate to be filled with a miracle.

It had taken you way too long to find the dank, cloistered cave where her true temptations dwelled, and the power you wield over that so-called sin. How much sooner could this nightmare have lapsed if you’d jumped on it earlier and bent her—literally—to your will?

Really, it will take nothing from you to make her an adulteress, a gender traitor, and a fallen woman all in one neat little package, delivering her right to her devil’s doorstep.

The grim, paralyzed set of her lips with those panicked eyes scream out that she knows already, how quickly she would fall from grace with a simple touch. Frozen, statuesque to the naked eye, she's thrashing inside herself, scrambling to maintain the only dusting of make-believe control she thinks she still has.

There's an acrid metallic taste on your tongue, like gunpowder, hanging in the dense air on a foggy morning. Bloody. Bitter.  It was never like this with Nick. That was a sense of liberation and comfort, and a sensuous lust for both existential and literal survival. His hunger was a warm blanket to block out the horrors elsewhere, and his fear was sidelined easily. He didn't resist himself. He knew himself. Back then, it tasted like fresh key limes and the smell of late summer bonfires at the beach.

But you relish this new flavour now with her, in its virulence and bitterness. If they could package it and sell it as a cocktail at one of those hipster bars, it would be called something obtuse, but violent.

_Gunsmoke and the Shivering Death of God._

The battlefield lies beneath you, as an old mattress and rough cotton sheets. Who knew war was so intimate?

She knows how easy it would be to lose what little remains, which is why she clenches her jaw and swallows hard every time you're within five feet of her, like a bad habit she can't break. You're the smuggled cigarette she dangles between her fingers, every breath cloaked in resentment towards her own weakness. She maintains the petulant and overly rigid posture of a woman crooked from sinfulness. What a terrible actress she's always been, how hollow her attempts at self-control when before she's always had an outlet for the fury. Why practice willpower when such efforts aren’t ever  expected of the hysterical female species here? You're all only vaginas with emotions, after all. Yes, she’s played that role exceptionally well. If the expression of pure caged rage had a name it would be Serena Joy.

And yet, she still invokes her Lord's name for all manner of things. God has always been her safety blanket to grasp when all other meaning has died. Now, that's yours for the taking.

When you lean towards her, she flinches at the sudden movement, but wanes quickly, the long shadows roping her back into your snare. She can't fucking help herself, can she? She needs to possess everything her husband has sunk his teeth into. With good reason, she's envious of him and anxious that she’ll have nothing left at all when he’s finished. So, with a shrug, you present yourself like a goddamn gift because _she_ has to be the one to make the first move, otherwise you're just like Eve in that precious garden of hers. The dried tears on her face and the haunting cries from earlier in the night give you pause. You're not sure if she came here for forgiveness or mere solace, but you're not going to give her either, and then be the one to blame come morning.

The blame lies on her alone.

_Where is your God now, Mrs. Waterford?_

She's so close you can smell her terrible lavender perfume oil, like venom seeping up your nostrils and into your pores. Her breathing is ragged but expertly contained; practice makes perfect, of course.

You know what it does to men, so you try it on her, a subtle temptation. Akin to a snake, your tongue darts out to lick your bottom lip; casually, coyly.

 _Oh_ , you always could drive all the boys crazy. It worked on lovers like Luke and Nick. It worked on her vile husband equally well.

She draws in a sharp breath before slowly breaking down. Her lips are cool and dry against yours, a reminder of the feel of her chilly sitting room in winter. She bruises you even now, your lips and your arms, where she is holding on too tightly. It's like she has no concept of how to be gentle. In her life, clearly passion is just a twin companion to brutality. She has no ability to translate between the two. Her tongue invades your mouth first, demanding your consent instead of asking, and as you open to her, you try to swallow her god in one gulp. It’s your only revenge, and that tingle throughout your body, with the heat budding in your gut like flowers in summer, it's your own bad habit.

He (because you're certain her God is a man) tickles on the way down, with his tiny little legs and tinier claws scratching your throat, flailing and resisting your insistent hunger. You swallow him whole.

She doesn’t even notice the loss; her body is too focused on your mouth, her pulse racing under your fingertips as you pull away her light blue burial shroud. It glides from her shoulders and pools around her waist as she remains precariously perched on the edge of your bed. Her hands freeze around your arms, and your cotton nightdress remains in place.

You are the white and chaste contrast to her pinkened and naked greed.

Does she even know she’s completely under your sway now? Mrs. Waterford, debased and weak at the hands of a fallen _woman_. You want her shame to scream out until she's deaf, because that is the true cost of her desire.

Everything about this remains cold and functional, like she’s holding back with every fibre in her being, but seeking the affection and fleshly pleasure that’s been constantly denied to her here. There are watercolour paintings hung in all her spaces of the house, expertly articulated birds and flowers with her trademark technical skill. Each stroke is decisive and focused, only allowing the colours to bleed where they are meant to, all to elaborate on the beauty of still, lifeless nature she revels in. The textbook birds lack vivacity, and the flowers are mere shadows, as if they've all been pulled from a frozen memory of hers rather than the aftermath of dull flora in her greenhouse. Her art is in precision, and her hands move across your body the same way as they sweep that paintbrush across canvas: meticulously. That is, until a smear of colour betrays its boundaries against her will. A spill, a mistake. Like the unexpected rose flush of your cheeks, or the accidental reddening of your lips from her relentless mouth.

You can taste the thirst in her kisses as they grow sloppier, wetter, blurring the borders of her artistic restraint. In watercolor, there is no erasing a mistake, only transformation. Her large hands—the same ones that have held you down for her own spiteful use—grasp both sides of your head, anchoring you to her now as if it’s ever been any other way. It feels the same as when she choked you on the windowsill, except for the missing pinky finger. In response, this time you can dig your nails into the tender skin of her bare waist and make her flinch backwards in pain. Your lips grin against hers with the quiet yelp but the sound changes to something much more guttural when you slide a thumb over her hardened nipple instead.

Almost like a reflex instead of consciousness, she nips at your bottom lip, dragging a staggered sigh out of you. She wants her god back.

Little does she know there’s no way back now, especially made obvious when you grasp her blue linen nightgown and she wrestles completely free of it herself with very little of your assistance. _God_ , she’s truly pathetic. She’s _so_ easy you barely have to do more than simply tolerate her kisses for her to come apart at the seams. Before you can touch her in the most wicked of ways, her weight pushes you back onto the mattress, her mouth hot and slick on your neck and it's your turn to swiftly suck in a tight breath. She’s all over you, quicksand, drowning. You can’t breathe under her.

Her fingers drift with the purposeful stealth of a hunter across the white cotton covering your body. A lioness, perhaps. A cobra in the grass. She's not slow or shy any longer as you feel your own breath catch and your skin break out in goosebumps. Maybe she _has_ done this before. Maybe there's more to the previous Handmaid's suicide than you thought. Maybe you’ve underestimated her ferocity.

Her claws scratch up from your knee to your hips, dragging the flimsy nightdress with them and as the cool breeze hits you, your power wavers precariously. There’s a quiet throb building in your abdomen that you hadn’t expected and it's not entirely unwelcome.

 _Hate_ , you tell yourself. _That’s all it is_.

Her fingers are warm and certain, urgent but not as rough as previously. Her mouth covers yours before you can suck in a deep breath and steady your roiling nerves. Instead, you’re full of her. _Everywhere_.

The room, her body, they're suffocating as she flows over you, and inside you. Regardless, your knees bend and your hips curl towards her, urging her deeper, trying to force her to bend to your will to get the pressure where you need it. You didn’t even want to get off when this began; you had just wanted to drag her down to Hell with you.

How does she know how to make you writhe this way?

Still, she avoids eye contact, preferring to keep her face buried in your hair or eyes closed as she pushes her lips against yours over and over. There’s something gross about that, like she’s used you for your female body once already for her own selfish benefit. This is simply another version of that.

It’s time to try your luck, and maybe die in the process. Wouldn’t that be the icing on the cake? _Handmaid found dead in mid-fuck with Commander’s insane and licentious wife_. You can read the perverse headlines now, in the bold typeface at the top of Fred’s security orders that you and Serena brazenly used to sin together. You’ve committed a lot of Gileadean crimes together, now that you think about it. Big ones. Death sentence-type shit, over and over, and now it's come to this.

Your fingers try to find purchase along her smooth skin, grabbing and pulling her down closer to you, your fingertips crushing into hidden two-day-old lesions on the back of her thighs, complete with the novel feeling of her breasts pressing against yours through the thin fabric. So, you deliberately moan. Not too loud, but also not without believable ardor.

Only part of it is acting.

The first sound maybe, but all the ones that follow? Not so much. The small little groans, the panting and mewling as she nips a little at your neck, when she moves her fingers in precisely that way. No, what comes out of you isn't totally a lie for her benefit and your vengeance.

Everything stops abruptly when she slaps her hand over your mouth to silence you, the one she just had between your legs. You can smell yourself on her fingers, taste yourself a little. If she knows this intoxication, she doesn't let on.

Her face lowers, and finally she meets your icy blue gaze with her own, furious with the glimmer of fear.

“ _Enough_ ,” comes the snarl, low, echoing eerily in your head like the sound of moving water in a distant drainage tunnel.

_No, Serena. It's not. Your god is mine now. I own you._

You meet her warning glare, eyes narrowing, and reach up. Your serpentine fingers wrap around her stiff wrist and close tightly, slowly, as you refuse to break eye contact. For a moment, you think about Nick, Hannah, and Nicole, and imagine it's her neck you're crushing instead. You’ve learnt that from her at least.

What lessons she brings. What false, hollow teachings.

With a steadiness you can't feel elsewhere, you peel her hand from your mouth, the same mouth that with just a slightly louder sound could spell her execution if her envious husband were to come rushing towards the noise. Your lips curve into a smirk as your stare her down, both of you aware of the control you have over this moment, and especially her husband the Commander. Blue has always looked good on you; it brings out your eyes.

“Don’t,” you growl in return, squeezing her wrist even tighter until she winces.

She’s silently fixated on you, swallowing heavily, and you’re not certain she’s even breathing anymore. Good. But there's still that flicker of a wild animal, stalking, waiting to strike again. Her lips are pressed firmly together but behind them you can sense the baring of huge white fangs all the same.

You bring her hand to your mouth, sliding your tongue along her index finger. Your taste is not exactly familiar and the slight saltiness takes you aback momentarily. Restraining yourself and her wrist still, instead, you slide your other hand down between your thighs and bring it back up, glistening with a new poison for her to try.

It's a triumphant moment when you catch the split second that her gaze widens, her pupils huge and eyes darkening.

There's no need to ask, let alone demand, because she already knows and she's starving. Her breath is hot, her tongue warm and slippery across your glossy fingers. It's her first taste of you and she tumbles from glory with little more than a breathy, corrupted sigh.

Like Dracula, you turn her into the type of monster she's convinced you are. And like Dracula, she cannot resist the simple, pulsing seduction of human touch. Welcome to the congregation of the fallen.

_Blessed are the sinners._

You taste yourself on her when she seals her lips to yours again, and quickly her fingers are back inside you, with your hips bucking up from the mattress and she groans deep in her chest in response. It's a husky, terrifying sound in many ways because it's so unfamiliar. Another part of you craves more just to hear it for that very same reason.

Every movement is flavoured by a pervasive, desperate loneliness, craving any semblance of connection to another person, as if her isolation has not merely been from her husband but herself. The way she breathes heavily and catches herself right before it becomes wanton, the way her eyes dart every so often to make sure everything is still in place, the way her hands exert the overbearing weight of someone who is terrified their company is going to disappear, or worse, doesn't really exist in the first place. She fucks you, intently, as if you’ll evaporate into ether at any second.

This purposeful focus, and the anxiety that surrounds her at the prospect this could vanish, is horrifying in its familiarity. Maybe that's why you recognize it so deeply.

Why should you be the one to comfort your own captor? It’s sick, it's wrong, it's revolting that you would stoop this low simply to exact revenge upon her and the Commander sending Nick away to God knows where. You know you care about her, for some unfathomable reason, and you’ve never been able to stop it. You fucking hate yourself for goddamn sympathizing, and even more for actually enjoying it, and enjoying her attention.

She’s determined to make you come, and the concept of this is jarring considering the ugly history of  when you two are usually in bed together. This time, there’s none of the mechanical intrusion of the Ceremony—that strange, passionless, yet volatile threesome where pleasure is no part of the unholy treatise you unknowingly, unwillingly signed. The pads of her fingers slide over your clit and suddenly the world narrows down to her, above you: her breath, her panting in your ear, the small choked moans of hers wrapping around your complementary ones; the way she moves around you, her fingers penetrating fully, the earthly, animal scent of you and her mingling in the musty air of the attic. Frantically, your heart pounds and you grip at her arms, shoulders, ribcage, hair, at anything you find, hoping to draw blood somewhere, somehow.

You want to leave a mark. Possession is nine tenths of the law, as they used to say.

Despite the torrents of sensation flooding your entire body with her nearness, she remains distant from you in another way. A wall is still there, as solid and unyielding as ever.

That's not enough.

     What good is her disgrace if she can crawl in her tiny dark hole and hide from it afterwards?

You’re so close, and it would be far too easy to let her have her way—again. Your muscles tense as you deny yourself—and her—that impending release. Your hands grasp her by that long blonde hair and draw her to face you, nose to nose and eyes blearily locked.

“You’re going to make me come.”

It’s not a command; more of a conspiratorially whispered informative fact, which wouldn’t be remotely debatable the situation, but you need her to recognize exactly what this moment entails, with her lust and greed to consume and control, and you burgeoning into some other creature that her god cannot save her from. Your free hand slithers between your bodies to brush between her legs, finding her soaking wet for this, for _you._ She practically collapses—only for a brief moment—with her muscles giving way above you, and a sharp gasp ripped from her throat.

You’re playing with fire right now.

Finally, the nail in the coffin, right in her ear with all the suppressed arousal you feel: “ _Serena_.” Your teeth graze her earlobe, _just_ enough.

A reckless moan erupts from her at the devout incantation of her name, louder than is safe, and she immediately bites down on her own lip, eyes squeezing shut. Perhaps it's a curse on her. You've broken her finally and that feels amazing. It feels fucking _divine_.

High school science had once taught you blue was the hottest part of the flame and you're sure Serena is close to incinerating everything she touches, especially you. Part of you wonders if you’ve made a terrible mistake and this going to blow up in your face. Her hands are touching you in all the right places, in all the right ways, at all the right times, and _fuck_ , it’s sublime. You’re enjoying touching her too, and those strangled hisses and groans that you can draw from her even more. The scent of her perfume mixed with the heady musk of her arousal cloaks you in a dense fog, the heat of her mouth on your skin, on your lips, her weight above you, all sit like a goddamn shield, cocooning you from the world, almost invincible.

This feeling is _much_ more familiar.

You can hear Aunt Lydia, and feel the shooting pain of her cattle prod coming down on your skull, and then blasting, zapping heat through your blood. Then, Serena screaming, throwing herself over you, her whispers in your ear and her arms encircling you, even briefly. A testament to her power in the house. Even Aunt Lydia backs away from _Mrs. Waterford_ sometimes. You know it had all been based on a lie, and one that belied Serena's selfishness and entitlement. But, for a brief moment on the floor of that sitting room, she'd held you, stroked you, comforted you, protected you, not merely her baby she thought grew inside your body.

This was supposed to be a seduction to bring her down, to eat her god, to demand she recognize herself as no better than anybody else and especially no better than you, and push her off that holier-than-thou cliff she balanced upon everyday. It wasn’t meant to feel like she’s sucking poison out of your wounds instead; they’re the very same wounds she inflicted in the first place. It's certainly not supposed to feel freeing, and safe, or anything akin to as fucking good as it does.

You come with a sudden surge, unexpected even to you in its intensity and she's visibly shaken, a little unprepared for the reality of her behaviour. Luckily, once again, you manage to hiss out her name as the final waves hit you, grasping onto her solid body, digging in to her flesh, your short fingernails all little fangs along her white skin.

When you look up at her, you wonder if she had seen ecstasy or apostasy as you threw your head back, biting down on your moans. Both, you hope. This doesn’t work without both. Does she taste the iron and buckshot too? Did she see God and feel him die too? Her eyes are searching your face, as if the answers are there on your sweaty brow, swollen lips, and heaving chest but it’s not for you to say.

This isn’t your fall from grace. _Been there, done that, got the red robe with the white bonnet._

Or, maybe it's only that she gets off on the power over you and your body, as is her usual predisposition. There's only one way to find out for sure.

So you push her off you, slide down her naked body until your lips meet her inner thigh, and wait for the gasp. It's not like this is the first time your head has been between her legs; just this time it's your mouth against her instead of the crown of your head as the Commander repetitively thrusts you into her. Of course she doesn't disappoint you this time. As her thighs spread eagerly for you, she sighs a long melodic gust, as if she's been waiting her entire life for this, and had no idea until this exact moment.

     It's too easy to pleasure such a starving woman.

 

**.......**

 

When you arrive back to the house from your early morning walk to the shops, the Commander is at the dining table, tea on one side of his whirring laptop, and his stony wife somewhere on the other. It’s silent save for Rita’s puttering in the kitchen; the jarring clink of cleaning dishes from their breakfast echoes hollowly. Once upon a time, it would remind you of listening to a movie swordfight on TV from another room. Now, it’s the clank of chains on top of a diving board, the snap of a belt buckle or the taste of blood. As you hang your red cloak at the door, dripping off the coat rack, he looks up.

“Well, good morning, Offred.” He’s done away with the more formal greetings now, for a reason you’d rather not ask about. Familiarity? It’s almost a flirty tease, the tone he uses. “Have a good walk today?”

There’s a practiced and demure smile you prefer to use with him at times like these, especially when she’s around. It drives her crazy on the best of days and you’ve yet to figure out which kind of day it is for her this morning. You blink slowly, like a young doe in a spring meadow (getting ready for the rut). He eats that shit up too.

“Yes, Commander Waterford.” Your gaze shifts to his wife, sitting silently, glaring from over the rim of her half-empty coffee cup, shoulders square and blue eyes cold. If you didn’t know better, you’d believe that last night was all some sort of crazy hate sex nightmare fantasy you’d concocted in your own head because she looks just as fucking unpleasant as every morning.

You meet her challenge head on, speaking to her husband but never letting your saccharine lilt drop, nor your defiant stare. “It was very nice, thank you.”

By now, he's accustomed to this tiring _tête-à-tête_ that has infected the household and chooses to ignore the quiet tantrums. You smirk at her all the same and, as always, he looks back down at his very important bullshit work with that placated grin on his face. She however looks brittle enough to shatter any second, not nearly as accomplished at this as she thinks. Duplicity is a performance art, and she’s worse than high school theatre improv right now. Her finger twitches against the handle of her dainty teacup. She’d be an appalling poker player, if such things were still allowed.

_Are you having a stroke, Mrs. Waterford?_

She refuses to look away first, refuses to give into you. Permafrost-encrusted and austere. Nothing like last night when she dampened your sheets and rode your face so hard you thought you might suffocate or drown in her entirely. All in all, it wouldn’t have been a bad death. Beats the Wall by some way, at least. Mimicking a neck roll, you rub a hand over the base of your skull, like you’re working out a stubborn kink in the muscles. You watch with perverse delight as her jaw clenches and her knuckles whiten around the fragile china cup. Mission accomplished.

Passing through the kitchen with a cavalier handoff of the groceries to Rita, you make it almost all the way to staircase before the sound of long footfalls catch up with you.

“Offred.” The cadence of her voice in that particular tone makes your skin crawl. “Come into the sitting room. Now.”

You take your time turning toward the sound, as slowly as possible really, attempting to draw out both your rebellion and the break between the impending punishment and this relative peace. Your heavy brown boots drag over the wooden floorboards, the crisp screech of pebbles getting drawn across them echoes through the hallway.

A memory of your mother’s half-hearted scolding floats somewhere in the periphery. _Junie, pick up those damn feet!_ She didn’t care about scuff marks on the flooring; she wasn’t that sort of woman at all. She did care about making the right kind of noise, not the pointless, petulant kind. This, however, feels necessary. Inevitable.

Serena is sternly poised in the centre of her precious, pristine sitting room, arms crossed and standing as tall as she can manage. A lonely, elegant stalagmite in a dark cave. Behind her, watercolour paintings of stiffened birds hang in the shadows. She’s as easy to snap as the withered stems of her dying flowers in the garden, and just as inflexible. Just as fragile, but you wouldn't know it by merely looking at her this way because even in slippers, she towers over you. Perhaps it’s meant to be intimidating still but somewhere between her fingers inside you and her shameless panting at the work of your tongue on her clit, she’s lost that power. She stands there nothing but an empty woman without her god, absent of meaning. A stony shell, sucked dry. A goddamn fossil.

She knows you know it.

She doesn’t touch you, merely moves right into your space until you’re forced to crane your neck upwards to match her glare. You nose tickles with the primal scent of her, of sex that hasn't quite been washed away yet; there's no lavender oil to mask it this early in the morning before she's made herself back into the perfect Wife. A heat radiates from her, despite her frost-blue nightgown, like that flame again. It feels good. Hot.

Something flutters in your chest, and between your legs. You half-expect her to give in to her new weakness, to simply push you up against one of these sickly green walls and take you like you know she can, with ease.

For a long moment, she stays perfectly still, unblinking and stoic, as if her face has permanently hardened into this scowl.

_Boring._

You’ve played this little game too many times now and the rules are always the same, her response is always the fucking same. So, you casually cock your head to the side and shift your weight impatiently. She loathes that impertinence—that vaguely adolescent petulance you seem to fall into so easily—but her mouth opens, barely a fraction and a glazed sort of look comes over her face, especially when you’re near.

It's one of her many, _many_ tells. Now you know what it really means and you can feel her breathing hitch that tiny little bit; she’s thinking about you, and her. Last night. And about her next meal.

Fuck it, so are you.

Never breaking the stare, mere inches apart, your lips quirk just enough to signal that you are absolutely picturing her naked as she came, tasting her, feeling the way her hips pushed against you, her grabby pathetic hands in your hair, your cum coating her fingers, her swollen lips on your neck, your limbs all coiled around each other like serpents in heat. There’s nothing she could ever possibly do to take that vivid, and _deliciously_ blasphemous memory away from you.

Her god screamed bloody murder last night and you gleefully danced in his desiccated remains.

Any minute there will be the stinging slap of an open palm against your cheek, or maybe this time some new abuse. Who knows what she's capable of now she’s officially a soulless heathen.

“Come to my room tonight,” she whispers instead—her voice like shattered glass—turning quickly and exiting before you can even make a snide remark back.

Well, _that's_ new.

Maybe she remembers that you've seen her crucifix tattoo, in a place on her body that no one but her husband should know. You can tell the Council that. You can tell _him_ that. How many notches do you have on your bedpost against her by now?

She's an honest to God criminal in Gilead finally, of the sort that can be sent to the Colonies or hanged on the Wall with zero regret from the Commander. He would be seething, livid with pure rage. Hearing the ghosts of his belt and her cries, you wouldn't put it past him to beat her to death before the Council even caught wind of her so-called crimes. Because how dare she?

You’re his possession. You're Offred, not Ofserena.

(Yet you own both of them now.)

Still, the thought of going to her bedroom is equally repulsive as it is intriguing. It’s not exactly like you want to—you hate that _fucking_ bed more than any other place in this godforsaken house—but something is begging you to, even so. Part of you does want it, _her_ , whatever. The reasoning is simple but frightening: it’s enticing to own her worst secrets and that gives you back a sense of control over yourself; something about making her come, and visa versa, gives you back a sense of your own body. Why not put those two things together in the very place you’d had them stripped away?

Like planting a time-bomb in the heart of an enemy submarine.

Maybe that’s only a justification you tell yourself to convince yourself you’re not being a total idiot.

No, idiots don’t plan like this. If you’re going to get out of this shithole excuse for a country, if you’re going to get Hannah back, you’ll need her help. Nick’s gone and the Marthas are under strict watch, with Guardians posted every five feet around the entire district. The only person you know with anything akin to free movement, and that can occasionally be sympathetic to your plight, is her. You can’t have the Commander get in between you two again, like he had before with his belt and furious insecurity. You _need_ her and you’ll do anything possible to ensure he doesn’t interfere.

The whole plan scares the shit out of you, and you feel truly alone this time around. This isn’t anything like Nick, and you're not under any illusions that it is, despite the similarities in vague ways you’d rather not dwell on. When he would kiss you, it felt like the rest of the world was on fire except you two, in your bubble, safe from the inferno. When Serena does, it feels like _she's_ on fire and is consuming you in her flames. Nick, he was inherently kind to you, tender and supportive, interested in knowing your name and you as a person, he wanted to make your life as bearable as possible under the circumstances, to build a future, as stupid as it was to believe and hope for one. He _loved_ you.

Serena, however, only begrudgingly tolerates your existence on her best days, and barely can stand even the mention of you on her worst. Affinity towards you for anything other than what she can use your body for seems highly implausible.

But probably most confusing to you, even knowing the reality, is the very real fact that you want her, to touch her, over and over, _for hours_ , with her nibbles and bites like a fish with a worm on a hook. Whatever she can do with her body had only been an enigma of cruelty before last night, but now reeks of actual desire. Not just a once-off emotional fumble in the dark; she wants it again. And you'll take any and all her unholy offerings at this point. All you want is to relive the flood, and feel her lips on your skin, forget the bruising hold she’s had on you in the past, and instead, tremble under her fingertips. To watch her fall apart by your lips alone, have her inside you, swallow her moans, and feel the way she puts her wicked hands on you in a completely different, almost reverent way than she's ever done before.

It's the perfect place to hide, from this world and from your own memories.

You know the old stairs by heart, but take note of which ones creak the most on the way to her room. At night, things are even louder and you want to drag this out as long as you can.

_God is dead._

_What sacred games shall we have to invent?_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Last line is from Nietzsche's _The Gay Science_
> 
> "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"
> 
> ...
> 
> Please don't @ me about how snakes don't go into heat cos they're not mammals, lol. I may be a biologist but June is not. ;)


End file.
